Screwing Up in Rome

So, I find myself at home again, enjoying a quiet day by myself. In the kitchen, fixing some pop tarts. The sun’s just starting to come out in the back yard, filtering through the thick woods and backlighting the patchwork of mandarin-yellow leaves peeping through the evergreen pines and the huge laminated magnolia fronds with their little white sparks of reflection. Long grey-purple frosty morning shadows on the grass. Like tiger stripes.

North Florida at ten AM. I’d never noticed how beautiful it was.

Breakfast, and the paper, with the delightful mug-shots of a woolly-looking and very captured Saddam Hussein to further cheer me up. And then there’s those pop tarts. After a steady diet of these for breakfast, you find them repulsive—redolent of cardboard and artificial chocolate, especially if you eat them cold straight out of the foil packet while trying to figure out if you’re going to be late to your summer job. Today, they don’t seem so bad, though I’m a bit mystified as to how imitation cacao ever became a breakfast food.

Do I miss Rome? I can’t say. It’s there in the back of my mind, half-ignored, half-remembered like the still-packed luggage lying in the stair hall. They’d lost the big suitcase at JFK, turning up only yesterday. I’ve yet to check it but I hope the Christmas cake I’d bought the night before I left at the Camilloni bar at Sant’ Eustachio is still both intacta and fresh.

There are certainly enough things I’d wished I’d gotten at least a glimpse of before I’d left; the crèche at Santa Maria in Aracoeli, with the miraculous Bambino; the church of Santi Apostoli; and maybe another strategic dose of gnocchi ai quattro formaggi. But somehow, I don’t regret it: I’ll be back again next semester, a little older, a little wiser, and perhaps without the head-cold that’s bothering me somewhat at the moment.

It’d been most frustrating the last full weekend I’d been in Rome. I had grand plans. Due dates and projects were simply not going to get in the way of one last crack at the Eternal City. It’d started out auspiciously enough with my visit to Piazza Navona to browse through all those Befama-kitsch stockings and knockoff Nativity scenes, but then at noon he blue sky turned an ominous dirty grey and it started raining. So much for museum-going or another stroll down the Corso. We spent the day in and soaked our minds in a showing of the extended DVD of The Two Towers in the empty Aula.

The rain is the worst thing about winter in Rome. It’s not heavy—not always, at least. Simply ubiquitous, and unpredictable at the same time. The additional risk of being occasionally salted by hailstone chips doesn’t add to the allure. On the other hand, there’s also fog sometimes, which is somewhat fun. It doesn’t get much weirder when you wake up early one morning to take advantage of the free admission to the Vatican Museums last Sunday of the month and find that Michelangelo’s dome has vanished under a bizarre canopy of low-lying cloud.

Sunday wasn’t much better. Our group visit to the catacombs of Santa Priscilla—as well as our meeting with the legendarily hilarious archaeologist-nun Sister Marta—had gone belly-up because of the idiosyncrasies of the Italian bus system, and by the time the dust had settled, it was too late to hit San Gregorio for one last Tridentine hurrah before I left. An increasingly dismal sky put a damper on any further explorations of the city.

I had to face it. I’d screwed up. In Rome. All those “I’ll wait until I have a weekend free,” “I’ll wait until the project’s done”—all those had been wasted.

Still, by sunset, the rain had let up. As I headed towards the Vatican, I saw streaks of golden evening parting the thick canopy of blue-purple clouds. It was magnificent. The Christmas crèche in front of the Basilica was still hidden behind plastic hoardings, but inside, the vast nave was crowded with throngs of strolling pilgrims. Japanese tourists took the inevitable snapshot standing by the enormous cherubs by the holy water font. The oil lamps of the confessio blazed with subtle pinpricks of flame.

The red light on the English-language confessional was out, and the crochety OFM Conv. who, atop a big red-checked cushion, is perpetually there was nowhere to be seen. I decided my more-or-less weekly confession wasn’t so urgent as to necessitate using the only other venue available, a Portuguese polyglot who spoke Italian, Spanish and maybe French better than English—the last language and the smallest type on his little framed sign. Plus, the confessionals there are probably the most uncomfortable in the city. Had I screwed up again? Oh well.

So I turned and strolled through the polychrome marble caverns and paused to listen to the choir intone Conditor Alme Siderium as Vespers began. Three priests draped in purple and gold copes officiated beneath the great bronze Chair of Peter, while ranks of purple bishops stood in the choirstalls.

There’s something about visiting a great illuminated church at night, the way the voluminous glow of the lights pushes back the darkness of the opaque windows, the unfamiliar reversal of daylight and lamplight, night and interior dark. Unlike the oratorical, almost operatic gloom of the Chiesa Nuova at twilight or the Byzantine mingling of lamps and darkness at San Attanasio, it was an artificial noon here, Bernini’s architecture splendid in all its electrified glory.

I lingered briefly on the edge of the crowd, and decided not to stay for the rest of the service. It was growing dark far too quickly, and the Borgo was strange at night. My first evening in Rome, I’d walked across town to have a glimpse of the stars over the dome only to confront the echo of vespers or mass going on inside, amplified into the sinisterly empty, dark square by enormous outdoor speakers. The streetlights atop their suppository obelisks were dark, and teenagers were lighting rows of terra-cotta oil lamps along the street for reasons that were never explained to me.

However, this time, this one last time, the street was glowing with orange lamps. Above, the moon was breaking forth with Gothick theatrical panache from a purple billowing sky above the floodlit archangel of Castel Sant’ Angelo.

Despite a missing confessor and rain, it seemed like things were starting to look up for my last weekend in Rome.

I spent a half-hour on the way back in the genteel red-velvet-walled rooms of the little Museo Napoleonico south of the massive Palace of Justice, looking at dozens of busts and paintings of Bonapartist figures I knew, I thought I knew, or had no clue who they were.

Not bad, though there was an acute shortage of uniforms, drums, muskets and the sort of things one likes to see at Napoleonic museums. On the other hand, there was the lovely smiling and slightly careworn bust of Letizia Bonaparte, Nappy’s mother, and probably the one with the most brains in the family. And, even better, was the gorgeous gauzy Winterhaltur portrait of Napoleon III’s missus, Empress Eugènie, the former Spanish Countess of Montijo. If I had ever met her face-to-face, I’d have been reduced to a puddle of infatuated romantic mush within two minutes.

And who can blame me? After all, I’m told she was quite the Catholic. I backtracked twice to gaze at it, and would have done it a third time if the docent hadn’t pointed me back out into the lobby. Afterwards, I bought a postcard of the Empress and headed back towards studio to get ready for evening mass.

I thought the adventure was over, but it got even better. I managed to get lost.

You’re never really lost lost in Rome; it’s simply a matter of figuring out which direction to hit and just striking out for it through a maze of back-alleys. Street-names, foreign, complicated and often on hopelessly obscure little signs, are of no help. After a while, you get the hang of navigation and pick up a few familiar beacons to orient yourself.

A bicycle hanging above eye level from the sort of metal sign you associate with No Parking heralded my descent into Wonderland. Lights were strung overhead, blazing merrily above the Via dei Coronari, crowded with the hum of Christmas cheer. They say it’s named after the rosary-sellers that used to congregate along the narrow street, and now it’s lined with dozens of antique shops, their well-lit front windows filled with great trophies of gilt and ormolou.

So I strolled along, watching the café windows fill up in the chill purple evening, pressing my nose up to the glass of a closed militaria shop to note the toy soldiers as well as the display of a suit of heraldic livery for the footman for some Roman noble. Inside, a bald and corpulent man was sitting at a desk in the back and busying himself with a ledger. He seemed to have no interest in doing business. I noted the hours (closed Mondays, so much for tomorrow), though I never had a chance to get back there.

And then, turning the wrong way at the wrong corner I stumbled upon Piazza Navona completely unexpectedly. It was now a riot of colored lights, crowds, carousel-going children, mimes on pedestals and dozens of garishly gleaming stands selling the usual assortment of Nativity scenes as well as some new ones I’d missed the other morning, including hat-sellers, artists and much, much more. It was even more glorious and wacky and Italian by night—and so it should be.

I’d come full circle, back where the weekend had begun so hopefully under a pleasant blue sky. And, walking back to studio as I began to mentally compose this essay, I had to admit I had done pretty well for a screwed-up weekend.